Free Republic

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 28, 2005 — Last week Iraqi Prime Minister al-Ja'fari, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and I announced the decision not to deploy two brigades scheduled to come to Iraq early next year. The 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based out of Fort Riley, Kansas, was originally scheduled to deploy to central Iraq in December to replace the 29th Brigade Combat Team. Additionally, the Baumholder, Germany-based 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, was to deploy to the Iraqi province of Diyala in November to replace the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. The 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division will remain in...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE LOYALTY, Iraq, Dec. 16, 2005 – Nothing makes Army Lt. Col. Jamie Gayton more angry than someone saying coalition projects in East Baghdad have no effect. "We are making a difference every day in the lives of average Iraqis," said Gayton, the commander of 2-3 Brigade Troops Battalion and responsible for coalition projects in East Baghdad. Sadr City is a part of the area of operations for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division. Hundreds of projects in the area of 2.6 million people have changed life in the neighborhoods. When Americans...

BAGHDAD, Dec. 12, 2005 – Despite attacks, security concerns and an infrastructure that was degraded beyond expectation, the Iraq reconstruction effort has made tremendous progress, officials here said. More than 90 percent of the $18 billion that Congress appropriated to rebuild Iraq has been committed to projects around the nation. This is in addition to money the Iraqi government has appropriated. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has deferred $800 million worth of projects until the new government can have input. The effort is showing tangible results, said Ambassador Dan Speckhard, chief of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office here. Almost...

CARY, N.C. - The joke around here is that this town's name is really an acronym for "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees." As far as Vernon Yates is concerned, they haven't been contained well enough. Nearly surrounded by pricey subdivisions, the cinderblock Yates Grocery and Farm Supply sells neither anymore. As if things weren't bad enough, style maven Martha Stewart has chosen this Raleigh suburb to build a signature neighborhood of houses designed after her homes in Maine and New York. Holding court near a potbellied stove, the 69-year-old man in the suspenders and NASCAR shirt laments that his old...

WASHINGTON - A presidential panel says tax breaks that promote homeownership and encourage businesses to give workers health insurance should be changed to help more middle income families. "Clearly, under present law, the higher income folks benefit the most from those two aspects of the tax code," former Sen. Connie Mack, chairman of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, said Tuesday. Decisions on specific changes to recommend could be made next week as the nine-member panel wraps up its work, Mack said. The commission plans to issue a final report on Nov. 1. At the White House, presidential...

FALLUJAH, Iraq(Sept. 2, 2005) -- It’s hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread, or at least, the Iraqi-Arabic equivalent thereof. After weeks of hard labor, that's what Marines like Lance Cpl. Richard Spillers say how the people of Fallujah and their city council representatives see the newly reconstructed Entry Control Points-One and One A. Since mid-July, this 20-year-old Fayetteville, N.C. native has toiled alongside fellow troops with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, and supporting elements, under Iraq's blazing summer temperatures to move concrete road dividers, erect wooden personnel search huts, and stretch hundreds of yards of protective wiring. Now,...

I have often wondered whether liberal politicians and journalists, most of whom surely believe they are more sophisticated and enlightened than their conservative counterparts, truly don't understand the concept behind the intricate balance of powers the Framers incorporated into the Constitution or simply don't care. Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. asked in a recent column, "Should a temporary majority of 50.7 percent have control over the entire United States government? Should 49.3 percent of Americans have no influence over the nation's trajectory for the next generation? We are deciding whether one ideological orientation will hold sway over all...

NEW YORK - Internet users worried about spyware and adware are shunning specific Web sites, avoiding file-sharing networks, even switching browsers. Many have also stopped opening e-mail attachments without first making sure they are safe, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a study issued Wednesday. "People are scaling back on some Internet activities," said Susannah Fox, the study's main author. "People are feeling less adventurous, less free to do whatever they want to do online." Like no other Internet threat before it, spyware is getting people's attention, she said. "It maybe will bring more awareness of all...

Stop Making Sense Earlier this week, a once-prominent American politician weighed in on the questions of judicial appointees, the filibuster and religion in politics, and he made a lot of sense. Here's what he said: We began as a nation with a clear formulation of the basic relationship between God, our rights as individuals, the government we created to secure those rights, and the prerequisites for any power exercised by our government. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," our founders declared. "That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. ....

George W. Bush was the first sitting president to attend a papal funeral. Such symbolism speaks volumes about the evolution in Catholic America's voting habits during the past quarter-century and about Pope John Paul II's role in that conversion. Catholic voters were historically one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs. However, Pope John Paul II played a significant role in converting many conservative Catholics into reliable Republican voters. This sea change demonstrated that the contemporary Catholic vote is now the most important swing vote in American politics. Catholics are the bellwether voters: as go Catholics, so goes the nation....

WASHINGTON - House Democrats have decided to quit emphasizing that they will not negotiate changes to Social Security until President Bush drops his idea for private accounts. The switch in strategy comes after Democrats learned from focus groups that people frown on the lawmakers for being obstinate. "People feel like it doesn't show a good-faith effort," said a top House aide, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the internal data. "It makes us seem like we're 'typical politicians."' The shift in tactics comes with Democrats and Republicans unsure what will happen...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Undocumented immigrants from Mexico are staying longer and are more likely to bring their families to the United States as a result of stepped border security, experts said at a conference on immigration and homeland security Thursday. "They are staying in the U.S. longer because we've succeeded in making it too costly and dangerous to cross back," Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, told the audience of federal and local officials, immigration attorneys and community activists. The conference, hosted by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute,...

In honor of the clumsy half-witted spineless mindset of Senator’s Kerry, Kennedy and Boxer, everyone calm down a dog-gone minute! Let’s not overemphasize what’s happening in Lebanon as we speak! I can just envision these socialist gutless windbags scrambling for an emergency DNC strategy session as I write… First the people of Afghanistan, then the people of Iraq and now the people of Lebanon, all throwing off the shackles of tyranny and fear as they take to the streets by the thousand, ousting tyrannical regime after tyrannical regime across the Middle East, demanding freedom and liberty….Good Lord, you’d think they...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to privatize California's public pension systems is a major attack on the nation's corporate reform movement, Treasurer Phil Angelides and officials of five states said as they announced a national campaign to fight the move. Instead of putting the state's pension plans on sound financial footing, Schwarzenegger's plan "is part of a concerted effort to break apart the powerful voices of public pension funds that have stood up for ordinary investors in corporate boardrooms," Angelides said Wednesday. Angelides a board member of two California retirement funds that manage a combined $300 billion. The...

When I was younger, I dreamed of someday being a radio talk show host. I distinctly recall the evening in 1993 when, at the age of 8, I turned on the Kirby Wilbur show on Seattle’s “Hot Talk” 570 KVI. Talk radio thereafter became a sort of second classroom for me, a weighty counterbalance to the moral neutrality and civic illiteracy of my public school. I count among my teachers Mr. Wilbur, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, John Carlson, Michael Reagan, Floyd Brown, and others who came over the airwaves at various times during those formative years. Rush calls his program...

"I can wage a better war on terror than George Bush has." So speaks Senator Kerry in the U.S. presidential campaign's final days, again reminding voters that the key issue in this race remains as it was a year earlier - deciding which candidate will better protect Americans from terrorism.As with so many topics, the basic difference between Kerry and President Bush is one of character, with the challenger repeatedly changing his mind and the president sticking with one position.On occasion, Mr. Kerry adopts Bush-like terminology. For example, in September 2004 he talked about the war on terror being "as...

We're getting close to Election Day 2004 and the Kerry campaign is feeling the stress. Even with 90% of the media acting like an arm of the Kerry campaign, Kerry is still losing. Of course, Kerry's neighbor (at one of his mansions), a fellow named George Soros, got himself into the act by contributing about $18-million to the socialist committees of darkness in the background. The dark side thought they could use the money to defeat Bush this year by being extremely negative. Silly Soros, all he did was make a few political pikers rich. Oh, and it went far...

Within the next two years, San Diego County's white population will officially become a minority, as increasing numbers of Latinos and Asians transform the region into one in which there is no majority racial or ethnic group. New projections released yesterday by state demographers revealed that the changeover from majority to minority status for non-Hispanic whites by 2006 is happening 12 years earlier than had originally been predicted. Six years ago, when the state last compiled population projections, whites were not expected to become a minority in San Diego County until 2018. They now make up a little more than...

Yesterday,I wrote a brief piece suggesting President Bush was going to lose his bid for re-election. There were at least 100 responses: most of which were printable-although there were spittle marks on the text of a few.There were even a few thoughtful responses. I don't think it's gotten across: This is going to be one very,very rough election ! I'll give you a "for-instance" : In Ohio-long considered a Republican stronghold-the polls are running just about 50-50 between President Bush and Cash-In Kerry ! Offhand, I'd say it's about time to set aside such diversions as Janet's Jugs,Kerry's Interns (a...

<p>They used to be known as the boys on the bus: the big-name columnists, network TV producers and reporters for large-circulation newspapers who had the power to make or break a presidential candidate's reputation. Now they've got competition. In the 2004 election, the boys (and girls) on the bus have been joined by a new class of political arbiters: the geeks on their laptops. They call themselves bloggers. Their mission: to remake political journalism and, quite possibly, democracy itself. The plan: to run an end around big media by becoming publishers on the Internet.</p>